Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday October 23, 2010 @07:27AM
from the ok-roll-camera-but-say-3g-plus dept.

GMGruman writes "It's official: All those ads and vendor claims about 4G services being offered today or being right around the corner are fiction. The international standards body ITU has ruled that Clearwire's WiMax network and the LTE systems that Verizon and others are just starting to roll out are not in fact 4G services. Oops."

HOLY SHIT! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! Some marketing drones who don't understand the technologies they're pushing have made a mistake and mislabeled them while attempting to make them sound better than they are. THIS CANNOT BE!

Some marketing drones who don't understand the technologies they're pushing have made a mistake and mislabeled them while attempting to make them sound better than they are.

I'm sure they could come up with some new advertising slogan... Lessee there was the old standard, 3G, and we're so much better than THAT. But, we cannot say we meet the new standard, 4G. What we need is something that's better than 3... I've got it!

The last mile problem isn't the bottleneck , limited data plans , limited data rates , and limited bandwidth due to over-congested areas are the main problem.Mobile service providers want to sell you expensive "minutes" , offering good data plans would turn them into ordinary Internet providers and everybody would be swinging sip phones and talking they're mouth off for 20$ a month.

I was using limited as in artificially limited. Most providers won't give you what the current technology provides. They will QOS it on the backbone like it's nobody's business.As for the over-congested areas , they could de-congest those by adding more base stations with narrower angle antennas.But they won't. The only reason they'd rather shovel money into this tech rather than more of the old is because this way they can get more profit from either phone sales or the usual 2 year contract they come with

Rust belt tech milked until past its fall apart stage while propaganda soothes your mind and next gen stuck on bling makes you smile.
That new phone starting to feel a bit like a Trabant in your pocket?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4xZgxDffac [youtube.com]

Indeed, in Seattle, AT&T appears to have a dozen or so towers, all of them are way up north or way south, with none actually in the city limits as far as I can tell. Whereas T-Mobile seems to have a half dozen in my neighborhood alone.

While distance wise, 5 miles or so isn't too bad, trying to cram that many phones onto the same towers definitely isn't the way to decent reliability.

Not sure that it matters. When oil companies started marketing Type II Natural oil as "synthetic" the trade/standards committee called foul. So the oil companies went to court, found a judge to declare "if the oil acts like synthetic, even though it's natural, it can be marketed as 'synthetic' on the bottle." Now you can't be sure if your oil is a True Type IV synthetic built in a lab, or natural oil from the ground.

So the cellular companies will just find some compliant US judge to declare their service is "as fast as G4" and can be marketed as 'G4' on the label, without violating false advertising laws. Done deal.

Except the 4G standard doesn't necessarily define what speed you'll get. It defines a latency and target speeds. Even worse, there is absolutely no guarantee of interoperability between 4G products. The reality is that the consumers probably won't a difference between 3G and 4G. At least not in the current implementations of WiMax or LTE. What they will notice is better bandwidth, which being 4G compliant doesn't guarantee anymore than using Ca6 cable guarantees better bandwidth over a Cat5 cable*.

Really? I thought the ITU had become increasingly irrelevant over the past couple of decades. With ETSI controlling mobile standards, and IETF regulating Internet standards (with W3C specifically for web), what exactly to the ITU do any more? I read the Wikipedia page and it sounds as toothless as the UN itself.

The ITU is an INTERnational standards organization promulgating standards for interconnection of telephone equipment. Telephone equipment manufacturers pay attention to their regulations because the carriers want equipment that works together and often puts ITU standards in their requirements when they ask vendors to bid on supplying them with equipment.

That does not give it any standing at all in the US domestic advertising market, or in trademark law. (If ANSI had done it they MIGHT have had more clout.

So given that the ad aired after the announcement, does that mean that I can sue for false advertising or something? I figure, hey, if I'm in the US and have to deal with all of the crazy lawsuits out there, I might as well get my own piece of the action, eh?:-)

The idiot who poured coffee in her lap did not and should not have anticipated that the coffee would be served at temperatures that would be dangerous for anyone to handle, and well above what anyone in the food industry should have been serving. In fact, it was even above what the manufacturer of the machines that prepared the coffee intended for use.

The coffee was so hot that when it soaked into the material of her clothing, it stuck to her skin and caused third degree burns over 6% of her body.

No. The ITU doesn't hold any legal standing to set advertising standards in the US, except by direct contract with member companies. It is possible the ITU could sue for breach of contract, but no one has standing for a false advertising claim.

And as a side note: One thing that differentiates Clearwire/Sprint WiMax is that it is a 100% IPv4 network. From the user device to the net. The whole network from the tower to data center is Layer 2 Ethernet. Clearwire is not a telco, it is truly an ISP.

This is correct. When Sprint started boasting "The first 4g network" or whatever, I looked into it, and was surprised to see no evidence that ITU had ever bothered to trademark "4G". The ITU has _implicitly_ always maintained that WiMax isn't 4G, and that LTE has not yet been standardized, and merely a candidate for 4G. This announcement just makes it explicit. But still, it's just like, their opinion, man.

Actually they might have a case here, since at Sprint you can find stuff all over about 4G Wireless Broadband Network and 4G Coverage and Speeds and First and Only Wireless 4G which clearly they can't provide, since their speeds seem a bit far from 4G standard specs.

You are required to pay for the 4G service on top of the 3G service in order to activate the phone.

And? I don't see why so many people complain about that.

Because people who don't live in a major major city don't have any 4G towers yet. For example, Sprint doesn't have any 4G towers in a city of 200,000 residents in northeast Indiana.

DSL/Cable users pay higher fees for faster data than dialup.

When you buy a smrtphone, it's as if you were buying a bundle of a computer and a modem. You can't buy the computer without a modem; otherwise, you'd have the so-called "Android pod touch", and Google doesn't want that on the market.

It didn't work the last time Sprint advertised a "3G" phone, sold it to customers, and then when they rolled-out their network, the phone did not work (incompatible). Doubtful a lawsuit would succeed this time either.

What Verizon calls "large scale" is just the Houston area initially [vzw.com], with other major metropolitan areas and large airports following. You didn't really thought it will be a rapid rollout throughout most of the land area of the US, right? (BTW, Sweden and Norway have significantly lower population density)

Don't tell that to VZW marketing - they're claiming "4G" will be "network wide" soon. Though, just at 4G is now a bit of an exaggeration, is suspect soon is also valid only for very large values of soon.

(FWIW, I'm an ATT customer; Verizon coverage sucks everywhere except population centers. It happens to suck slightly less than ATT in those marginal areas, but in my area not enough to make a difference)

Did you even read the article you linked to? No, it's not most of the land area, but hardly "just the Houston area initially."

Verizon announced today that it is bringing the world’s first large-scale 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network to the Houston area. The initial availability of a 4G LTE wireless network in Houston is part of the company’s major network launch in 38 major metropolitan areas by the end of the year. In addition, the company is launching 4G LTE in more than 60 commercial air

It seems kind of obvious, reading that Verizon's LTE can give 5 - 12Mbit and WiMax 3 - 6Mbit, doesn't it? How can they advertise that as 4G when my current 3G network (Cosmote in Greece) offers HSPA+ at up to 21Mbit and while I don't have an HSPA+ device to test that, I do get the 3-7Mbit that my HSDPA device promises. Now that I look at the specs, my N900 at 10/2 capability should be even faster than my 7.2Mbit usb modem, perhaps I should benchmark it to make sure and throw away the modem...

Web 2.0 is actually a bad example as it accomplished a completely different goal than Web 1.0. Web 1.0 was human consumable content. Formats like HTML that described what is a heading, and what is a paragraph, but not what was contained within that heading or paragraph.

Web 2.0 brought formats based on XML, JSON, etc. which describe what the content is. What is a title, what is a price, etc. This allows computers to use the content in new ways that was only previously accomplishable using ugly scraping metho

Yes, Web 2.0 is all about taking protocols never designed for rigorous persistence and bending, twisting and warping them to make them work in a fashion that they were never designed for, rather than developing a protocol more appropriate for the client-server model.

Even 12Mbps doesn't sound super fast to me. In Canada we've had real world speeds higher than this from most carriers since the start of 2010. Even on our newest budget network (WIND Mobile) I've gotten real world speeds of 7Mbps on my N900.

T-Mobile has even recently been started calling HSPA+ (21Mbps) as 4G. Well why not, if you think "up to 12Mbps" is 4G.

Our major carriers will be rolling out 42Mbps+ (not sure what real world speeds will be) HSPA soon, and they are still calling it 3G. It's only marketing

The US cellphone network sucks in case you did not notice. One reason is that they have historically preferred longer range over high peak bandwidth. The less communication towers you have the cheaper your network is. They also have rather weak coverage. There is no government mandate for carriers to provide decent coverage. They usually are the first to hop on a new standard, which may get quickly obsoleted, become a niche which only exists in the US (Hello CDMA!). But hey, they have "4G".

CDMA is in fairly widespread use throughout much of Asia. Some of the carriers are planning moves to other technologies, but the same thing is happening in the US as the CDMA carriers are moving to LTE.

The US cellphone network sucks in case you did not notice. One reason is that they have historically preferred longer range over high peak bandwidth. The less communication towers you have the cheaper your network is. They also have rather weak coverage.

Exactly. The US is more spreadout and longer range is the only way to cheaply get good coverage. Other countries with higher average population densities don't have this issue.

There is no government mandate for carriers to provide decent coverage. They usually are the first to hop on a new standard, which may get quickly obsoleted, become a niche which only exists in the US (Hello CDMA!). But hey, they have "4G".

You're correct the US govt doesn't mandate wireless connectivity like they do analog phone service. The broadband initiative may provide some driving force for wireless internet access though.

I can't speak to the coverage in Sweden, but I can say my several US states (the ones where people complain about coverage) have lower population densities. These states don't have major metropolis cities, and don't have coverage issues.

Still, 21Mbit which is deployed in many countries and called 3G is close. In fact, at least a couple of countries have deployed HSPA+ at 28Mbit and the technology has a theoretical max of 56Mbit. And it is always called 3G or at most 3.5G. You can't go calling something 4G unless it is much faster as 3G was to 2G.

Well not really...but I can say that its still much faster than the AT&T 3g dataplan I had. The average consumer doesn't know what 3g or 4g means anyway...they would be better off calling it something else but for joe average the only thing they really know is 3g has been a term pushed down their throats and its slow...anything else just sounds faster. While i'd love to have 100Mbps truthfully I get better speeds from my wimax connection now than I do from my cable connection at home much of the time

truthfully I get better speeds from my wimax connection now than I do from my cable connection at home

But how long can you sustain those speeds? Even if wireless has the advantage in bits per second, the pricing model is such that wired has a substantial advantage in bits per month. You don't want to have to take two months to download a high-definition movie, the first 5 GB in one month and the second 5 GB in the other.

Once your WiMAX carrier takes on more customers, unmetered data plans like yours will become 5 GB/mo plans as soon as the carrier can afford to waive your early termination fee. Look at AT&T, which recently capped monthly transfers on new or renewed smartphone data plans.

. . . is there are so many to choose from. If I were running on of these money machines, I would call my data service 100G. I would say "we are so many Gs above the rest that your messages will get there BEFORE you send them." That is called puffing and is perfectly legal. I would advertise hot babes and sexy guys 100Ging all over the place, telling the world that 100Ging is like sexting but feels like real sex. I would leave the ITU, IETF, and IEEE to my standards body representatives, who like to travel all over the world, stay at nice hotels, eat at fine restaurants, sightsee, and get our latest patents turned into the next set of standards.

If I were running on of these money machines, I would call my data service 100G.

Then your competitor will defuse your puffer with "no bull" commercials that use objective measures such as log bps. For example, 100 kbps is 5, 1 Mbps is 6, and 10 Mbps is 7. And there is only one objective G, and that's gigabits per second. For example, if you provide 1 Mbps, you provide 0.001 G.

The international standards body ITU has ruled that Clearwire's WiMax network and the LTE systems that Verizon and others are just starting to roll out are not in fact 4G services.

Are not "in fact" 4G services? Unless the ITU has some sort of trademark on "4G", that is a ridiculous claim. Ultimately the marketplace will decide what is 4G and what isn't, and at this point it looks like the ITU is up for more ridicule than Sprint / Clearwire.

I understand that LTE is significantly different from its predecessors, which gives it as good a reason as any to claim to be "4G". Is "LTE-Advanced" so different from "LTE" to rationally claim that it should be "4G" and "LTE" not be?

I thought they were defining what "IMT-2000" and "IMT-Advanced" are. The ITU doesn't have anything formally to do with what "3G" and "4G" are, nor does anyone else. What is particularly ridiculous about this is that IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced aren't really standards at all, but rather standards for standards.

No one in this right mind is going to care which technicality keeps a real standard from being classified as IMT-Advanced, because it has absolutely no bearing on anything in the real world. It is just

ITU includes EDGE in "3G" - but no carrier does it AFAIK, despite current revisions of EDGE being close to the speed of first "real" 3G/UMTS; and future revisions surpassing it noticeably.

At least with currently available infrastructure of LTE, there should be decently straightforward upgrade path to LTE Advanced (the "true 4G" apparently...). Maybe they're fed up mainly with WiMax, which does seem more like a quick marketing gimmick.

I guess that ITU - the organization that defines what constitutes as 4G and what doesn't - does know what 4G means. And apparently, they think that LTE is just not big enough leap that it could be compared to the difference between GSM and UMTS, for example.

It is kinda like Web 3.0. A marketing term we hear every now and then when yet another company tries to claim that they've reinvented the web... But the difference is never comparable to that between 1.0 and 2.0 (the transition from company websites to s

I guess that ITU - the organization that defines what constitutes as 4G and what doesn't - does know what 4G means.

The ITU has no more standing to define what 4G means for advertising purposes within the US than you or I do. They can define what it means within their standards regime, but so what? The English language (unlike French) does not have an official standards board.

"nG" is a set of buzzwords used by executives roadmapping their network equipment offerings and network designs. It is not subject

1 was Analog2 was GSM2.5 was GPRS/EGPRS3 was UMTS3.5 was HSUPA+4 is LTE

Completely arbitrary. See the recent slashdot article about how companies kept redefining what "3G" meant. First it was GPRS. Then it was EGPRS. Then it was UMTS. They change definitions whenever the hell they feel like it.

Aside - I have an old phone called Ericsson DH668 which I think is analog only.Is this any good, or should I toss it?

MAN=Metropolitan Area NetworkA Network that covers a city, or significant portion of a city, or geographical area equivalent in size to a city. (There are also smaller network sizes, including Campus area networks, etc, but they always use either LAN or MAN technologies, so are irrelevant). There was an IEEE 802.6 standard here, but it never caught on. Common technologies here ate ATM, SONET, and increasingly Ethernet and MPLS.

I seem to remember several years back that engineers got on the marketers for selling DSL as "broadband" when truly cable is broadband and DSL is narrowband. This never stopped the marketers and now most people just assume broadband means anything faster than dial-up.

Because Broadband became synonymous with "better than dialup" speeds. Technically DSL is broadband as it uses a wide range of frequencies on the wire. So does a dialup modem. Ethernet and single-wavelength fiber transmission would be narrowband.

Because if you read abgout what 4G is actually defined to be by the ITU and then buy a device and 2 year contract because it's "4G",. you will be awfully disappointed. Before we became the Corporate States of America, we used to call that fraud.

What do you bet If I go around selling "gold" or buying stuff with "dollars" I get prosecuted?

According to the ITU, they have the authority to decide what is "fourth generation" and what isn't. That is so laughable that it is ridiculous. What is even more ridiculous is that they have busybodies wasting their time coming up with a meaningless meta-standard like ITM-Advanced in the first place, a meta-standard so inconsequential that it will have no real world effect on anyone anywhere.

The ITU invented the terminology and defined what it means. Just because for some reason you want corporate weasels to lie to you doesn't negate that. If the various vendors want to, they can invent their own terminology and than make empty claims around their new market speak.

Sorry, No. ITU did not invent the term "3G". It invented the term "IMT-2000". "3G" doesn't even appear on any of the relevant documents. Not only that, the work of the ITU is so content free that it could disappear tomorrow, and no one would notice the difference.

Two problems: (1) The ITU deciding what is "3G" and what is "4G" is a naked power grab. They only have the authority to decide what is "IMT-2000" and "IMT-Advanced". Nobody is advertising their devices as "IMT-Advanced".

(2) "IMT-2000" and "IMT-Advanced" are not technical standards, they are wish lists. The ITU (which is a worthless bureaucratic waste of time and energy) is now into the business of deciding which technologies are wish list compliant